Modern Masters

European Masters of Our Time brings to Boston not only the largest collection of modern art ever exhibited in these parts, but a fresh, welcome and rare approach as well. Not arranged according to school or historical progression, each painting hangs as the artist intended it, as an expressive entity complete in itself rather than as an example of anything generic or contingent. Each master is left to speak for himself.

The Museum of Fine Arts has succeeded, in short, in presenting an artist's art-exhibit rather than the institutional variety almost invariably found in presentations of this scope. The tacit assumption that these works of art are fully articulate in themselves leaves little to be added except that the exhibition is a magnificent one and that everyone ought to see it.

Twenty, or even ten years ago, it would have been impossible to apply the accolade master to these fifty-five painters and sculptors without drawing wholesale fire from all sides. The day is not long past when on the one hand Picasso and Matisse were charged with anarchy or incompetence or when, on the other, Bonnard was denounced as a "decadent impressionist" or Chagall as a "reactionary from cubism." More than half the artists exhibited are now deceased and almost all are very much the product of environments no longer to be found anywhere on the globe. In more ways than one these twentieth century works are the inheritance of our time rather than the products of it.

Here, formidably arrayed, is an art characterized, as Director Perry Rathbone has said, by its "strongly individualistic flavor." Yet, for most of these masters, their deepest bond lies in a conviction that, as Rouault put it, "anyone can revolt," and in a search for unequivocal vision whatever the individualistic idiom or temperament might be--the very quest for universality which led Picasso to stoutly affirm, "There is no abstract art."

Undoubtedly the greatest innovator in the ranks of modern painting since Cezanne, Picasso is represented here by several stages in his ever-changing process of vision. The late canvas Algerian Women, I, provides something of an anti-climax, more than a bit careless and in no way comparable to such definitive statements as Dog and Cock of the twenties, Woman Seated Before a Mirror of the thirties, or as early a gem as La Toilette of the Rose Period. Even here, however, the master's touch, a knowledgeable intuition, comes through despite whatever faults exist. Less can be said of the bronze, automobile-headed Baboon with Young, a cheap tour de force despite whatever claims to social satire it may make. There is some slight consolation in this tangible assurance that even the great must err.

One continues the exhibition with 104 paintings and 31 sculptures. There is something of particular delight for everyone here and at the same time enough for anyone, by no means a frequent combination.

Modigliani's Portrait of Kisling stands out as one of the most painterly works in this painter's exhibition, combining an almost archaic formal dignity with intensely human warmth.

Matisse asserts his own lyric manner in top form. As large a chef d'oevre as the Piano Lesson shares in common with the brilliant little Seated Odalisque an extraordinary clarity and extreme purity of expression.

Klee is there, of course, as sensitive and witty as ever, and Juan Gris, as richly controlled as always. Chagall is represented at his most fanciful and most substantial, Braque displays his talent for being perennially so very right, and Rouault, as usual, exhibits as much profundity in a landscape as in a crucifixion. It is good to see less exhibited figures such as Villon and Masson included, though Miro, Leger, Mondrian and the sculptor Lipschitz receive perhaps less than their due.

The German Expressionists, notably Beckmann, command far greater attention here than has been shown them in such collections in the past. Only the arrangement of a large German exhibition in New York prohibited the further expansion of this group.

In Boston, where modern painting has long been neglected, this exhibition is of special importance. For anyone who seeks art in quality, profusion and diversity, it is a major event.